This exhibition provides an account of Surrealism
as told through the Museum’s unique collection
of great masterpieces and lesser-known works
of the movement, as well as its deep holdings of
period journals, catalogues, and archival material.
Bringing together a diverse and exceptional group of more than seventy paintings, sculptures, photographs, drawings, prints, and books, the exhibition will
highlight the inspired minds and imaginations of
the most celebrated Surrealists—including Salvador
Dalí, Roberto Matta, Joan Miró, and Dorothea
Tanning, among others—while offering a wideranging view of the movement in general.

Surrealism was founded in Paris in 1924 by a group of young writers and artists
seeking to reinvent literature and the visual arts by aligning their own creative
processes with contemporary investigations of the human psyche. They explored
memory, fantasy, and the uncanny realm of dreams to reveal the secreted visions
of the subconscious, while embracing automatic writing and drawing, coincidence,
and unexpected associations so that chance could contend with reason. Organized
around the movement’s de facto leader, the French poet André Breton, these
revolutionary individuals aspired to forge in their works, and even society at large,
a new “absolute reality, a surreality.”

This exhibition is designed around the movement’s changing historic and geographic conditions. It will begin with Surrealism’s early development in Paris in the
1920s, continue through the 1930s with its rising profile as a dominant force in the
European avant-garde, and end with the transatlantic activities that characterized
the years during and after World War II. With work by more than forty artists,
plus examples of the many art and literary publications central to the Surrealist
exchange, this exhibition will present a fantastic survey of what is arguably the
most cohesive and long-lasting—yet equally idiosyncratic and varied—movement
of the twentieth century.

Sponsors

The exhibition is supported in part by the Arlin and Neysa Adams Endowment.

Curators

John Vick, Project Curatorial Assistant, Modern & Contemporary Art; and Matthew
Affron, The Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art